Quiet American filming

Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine (green shirt) during filming of "The Quiet American" in Vietnam. Fraser plays Alden Pyle, the quiet gent of the title, while Caine plays the jaded British journalist who narrated Graham Greene's novel.

HOME > VIETNAM > QUIET AMERICAN

The Quiet American filming in Hanoi

A while ago I mentioned that British film star Michael Caine was looking for an acceptable substitute for the opium he's supposed to smoke as the weary journalist in Graham Greene's much-adored novel about the Vietnam War--not the "American War," as the Vietnamese more accurately call it, but the "French War" that preceded it. Greene's viewpoint character detests the Americans that were already mucking about in Saigon in the 1950s. That, I suspect, is why the novel is so popular in academia.

Anyhow, the comedy continues, as evidenced by this story in The New York Post:

The Communist government of Vietnam didn't like the 1958 movie version of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, which starred war hero Audie Murphy and eliminated the novel's anti-Americanism. But the dictators evidently loved the script for the version Philip Noyce is directing for Miramax starring Michael Caine and Brendan Frazier. Producer Bill Horberg, just back from five weeks of shooting, was allowed to shut down Ho Chi Minh Square for nearly a week, dressing Hanoi's busiest intersection as 1952, filling it with hundreds of extras, and blowing up a few cars. "Everything went off without a hitch," Horberg said. As to why the Vietnamese are cooperating with the $30 million movie, "it's part of their cultural history," Horberg said. "The first version was a complete subversion of the book. We tried to find more balance."
But hey! Hasn't anyone noticed that Graham Greene's story was set in Saigon?

Possibly the locale was shifted to the north because Saigon has prospered in recent years, while Hanoi apparently remains the dreary colonial outpost that the French abandoned in 1954. It will be interesting to see how the filmmakers manage to recreate such distinctly Saigon landmarks as the Majestic, the Continental Palace, and of course Rue Catinat. (By the time I happened along, Catinat had been renamed Tu Do Street by South Vietnamese government. "Tu Do" means freedom. That couldn't be allowed to stand, of course so in 1975 the victorious communists renamed it "Dong Khoi" for people's revolt. They also renamed Saigon as "Ho Chi Minh City," but couldn't suppress its vitality.)

Brendan Fraser is playing the title character, the quiet American, a meddlesome CIA agent who manages to blow up a few innocent civilians in a very unlikely plot twist. The budget is $30 million, which ought to buy a lot of opium substitutes and even recreate a few Saigon landmarks like the terrace of the Continental Palace.

Later: Okay, I've now seen the movie, and I have to say it's a very good job. Michael Caine is getting a bit shopworn, with the result that his Englishman is even more weary than Graham Greene's. The girl who plays Phoung is perfect for the role: she's beautiful, she's unknowable, and in the end she's for sale to the highest bidder. As for the title character, what can we say? The CIA guy is what he is, and Brendan Fraser does a passable job with him. The novel's greatest weakness--that it hinges on an improbable bombing atrocity, planned by the CIA and executed by a fictional "third force"--remains a weakness in the movie. As for Saigon, it is shown as a dreary place of gloomy happenings. You'd never know from the movie that Saigon was once called "the Paris of the Orient"--that it was vibrant, colorful, and exciting. Unavoidable, perhaps, but sad. Still, this is one of the best movies I've seen this year. -- Dan Ford

ADVERTISEMENTS